Welcome -- Infrastructure influx
by Clair Urbain
As of this writing, our lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on a $1 trillion infrastructure assistance package that (hopefully) will be spent wisely to bring our highways, broadband internet, rail lines, power grid, airports, waterways, public transit and cyber security as well as climate change resiliency into the demats of the 21st century. That is an ambitious list and that’s a substantial amount of money. Let’s put it in perspective:
A million dollars is a stack of freshly printed $1,000 bills stacked four inches high. A billion dollars is a stack of $1,000 bills piled 33 stories tall. A trillion dollars is a stack of $1,000 bills rising 66 miles into the sky. That’s 348,480 feet, folks!
A million dollars is a stack of freshly printed $1,000 bills stacked four inches high. A billion dollars is a stack of $1,000 bills piled 33 stories tall. A trillion dollars is a stack of $1,000 bills rising 66 miles into the sky. That’s 348,480 feet, folks! |
Let’s not forget that the good ol’ USA has a national debt of nearly $28.5 trillion, so taking this illustration one step further, you would have to get in a car and drive at 65 miles per hour for 28 hours straight and still not pass all that money we owe in our national debt, all while knowing you’re passing a million dollars every four inches.
These calculations were posted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (pfpg.org), a non-partisan organization dedicated to addressing America’s long-term fiscal challenges to ensure a better economic future. In its analysis of the coming infrastructure package, it reports , “Economists generally agree that federal infrastructure investment can have significant positive impacts on the economy. However, those benefits are a function of the size of the infrastructure investment and are mitigated in significant ways if the package is deficit-financed. Lawmakers, to their credit, are pursuing ways to pay for some or all of their priorities, an important recognition of our nation’s unsustainable fiscal outlook.”
The report is interesting reading; check it out at https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/08/what-economic-effects-can-we-expect-from-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill.
This article originally appeared in the Septemer-October 2021 issue of Pro Contractor Rentals magazine. ©2021 Urbain Communications LLC. All rights reserved.
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